The technician

I totally forgot to write here about the technician visiting. I've been busy with lots of stuff, been out of town for a while and haven't had a chance to write here. The good news is my phone is working now. I can call out, and I can receive calls. It even seems like the weird stuff has stopped happening. But now I'm getting ahead of myself, let me tell you about the technician.

He came to my house around 3 o'clock on May 10. He was a nice guy, and he tried practically everything to make the phone work. First he changed the modem, because he said that had fixed it at another house. He also complained that this new model modem they're using now has the splitter built in, because then he couldn't test the signal between the splitter and the actual modem. Of course, changing the modem didn't work. He called my land line from his cell phone, and when that didn't work he called in to the ISP/phone company. He actually reported some kind of noise to the company, which he hadn't mentioned to me while he called and I tried to answer the phone. So that kind of worried me. I don't know what the noise was, because I didn't dare ask, but he reported it as some kind of beeping.

He then exchanged my phone plug for a newer model. That didn't help. Finally, he switched my modem back to the model I had when I only had my internet connection through my ISP. Back then, the splitter was seperate. The technician put in a bigger splitter than the one I had before, now it's a black box connected to the power outlet, instead of a tiny white plastic thing that didn't need power.

I was just about to write that it's been working fine ever since, but now my internet connection died on me. Just now, as I'm writing. I can see the modem WAN light blinking. I hope it comes back online so I can post this. I really hate when I'm writing in a textbox on a website and discover that my connection died. Now what? Do I paste the text into Notepad and save it there? OK, wait. It seems to be working now.

Shit. I'm stupid. I just realised that I should have picked up the phone to see if the line was still working when the internet connection was out. Maybe it was the noise again interfering with my line. Maybe I missed something now. Shit, I really need more clues, I need to find out what is going on. I'll try to remember that if the WAN light starts blinking again.

OK, long post again this time, sorry.

Toxi

A guy I know from usenet, lasty aka lastfuture, comments on this blog sometimes, and today he gave me the URL to the blog of a friend of his, Toxi. I read it earlier today, and then I flipped! Really, I just walked away from the computer and started doing anything, making the bed, tidying up, called tech support again and bitched (apparently they're finally sending a technician, on May 10, wtf!!). I finally calmed down and I guess I was in denial or some kind of shock, because I just avoided my computer all day. I'm still a bit freaked, but now I feel silly for acting like that.

Well, the thing is that Toxi's blog kind of scared me. Take a look, he (I think lasty said "he") calls it The ToxiBox. I started reading it from the beginning, or I kind of skip to where I see that his phone starts acting weird. That's why lasty gave me the link. So I read on, and eventually it looks like his problems stop. Kind of a let-down, but I keep reading anyway and see that video he recorded when his TV channels got... weird. I don't know what to call it. Just watch it. Compare it with my SMS. It's the same day, and the same time. Now compare with my phone noise. I don't know if you can tell, like I said before, the phone noise sounded different to me when I heard it compared to the recording, but it sounds really similar. It's the same tone. So maybe you understand why it creeped me out.

I don't know, maybe the time thing is a coincidence, and maybe the noises aren't that alike, but it's just too close. It feels exactly like I'm back in those woods again when I was a kid, with the walkie-talkie that was picking up someone's transmission. Like "Oh fuck, I'm hearing something I shouldn't be hearing, this could be something serious, something secret." Do these things even mean something? Is the binary code in the SMS some kind of message? I feel like maybe I'm going crazy. This feels very unreal.

Cell phone too?!

OK, I don't know what it is with phones and me now. I'm still waiting for my phone company to call back and fix my landline, but now my cell phone is acting weird.

I'm watching TV, and then my cell starts vibrating, so I think "Yay, finally an SMS from my phone company, the phone is fixed!" But no, it's just vibrating for no reason. No message on the screen or anything. I press the buttons, nothing happens. I press the power button. Nothing. I hold the power button. Nothing. At this point I'm scared that it's malfunctioning and won't ever work again, but I take the battery out and put it back in, and I'm relieved that it starts just like it should. Then it tells me I do have a new SMS. I read it, and according to the date and time, I got it when the phone started vibrating. Hm? Did an SMS crash my phone? Is that even possible?

Also, it doesn't make any sense, it's just ones and zeroes. A binary number maybe. I took a photo of it so you can have a look if you want to. The "From" field seems screwy, there's no way I could've gotten an SMS from a number that short. Doesn't make sense. Most cell phone services have 5-digit numbers.

Read the SMS

If my cell is going to die on me too, I'll have no way of calling people. Shit, what if there's a fire or something?

Support

Phone still not working properly. I can call out, but incoming calls are still screwy. So I called tech support again. This time around they told me that the switch is fixed and that I shouldn't be having any trouble. Well duh, I just told you I still do. I didn't say anything about the noise, because I'm still afraid it might have something to do with my neighbour, but I told them about the incoming calls. I've even tried calling my land line from my cell phone, and the cell says it's been disconnected before my phone at home even starts ringing. But it does ring, and it keeps ringing until I pick it up, and then I just get a dial tone.

They tell me to restart my ADSL modem, i.e. just unplug it and plug it in again. That's because my phone connects through the modem somehow, even though it's not directly connected to the modem. Don't ask me how it works, but my phone company is my internet service provider. So I reboot the modem, but it doesn't help. The support guy tries to call me several times, and he can tell that something's weird. At one point he mentions that he got some kind of signal or noise, maybe a beep, but he's in trouble shooting mode and quickly skips ahead to the next test, so he's really just mumbling to himself.

So while I'm wondering what noise he could have heard, he puts me on hold to go talk to a technician. He comes back a while later and tells me he's put my problem in the technician's queue, and assigned it the highest priority (or "high prio" as he calls it). He takes down my cell phone number and tells me they might call and that I'll get an SMS when the problem's solved. Also, they probably won't be able to fix anything until tomorrow. Apparently they're still doing some kind of error checking on the switch that crashed.

I'm eagerly awaiting that SMS. Not being able to answer the phone is kind of frustrating. And I'm still wondering where my neighbour is. He hasn't come home yet. Not that it's really any of my business, but he did drive off in a huff after yelling at me, so I'm kind of concerned.

The noise (cont'd)

OK, I thought I'd tell you exactly what happened yesterday. I was in bed, and I was just about to fall asleep when the phone started ringing. It gave me a serious fright, just like everything does when you're half asleep, and my heart was pounding like crazy when I picked up the phone. Who the hell was calling so late? Then I got even more worked up when I remembered that I can't answer calls with my stupid phone. So by the time I put the phone to my ear I was really pissed off.

That's when I heard the noise. Not only that, but I could clearly hear a voice on the other end, but I don't think I just overheard a conversation, because it sounded like someone reading from a list over and over. I couldn't make out any words. I freaked and just froze at first, but then I finally remembered that I wanted to record it, so I booted up my computer and held the microphone to the receiver. Unfortunately, the noise stopped just a few seconds after that.

When I listen to the sample now, the voice isn't as clear. After listening to it a few times, I'm starting to doubt that it was there in the first place. If you can hear anything besides noise in the recording (there's a link to it in the previous post), please leave a comment here.

Oh by the way, my neighbour's car is still missing from the driveway. Seems like he's been gone all night. So if he's not doing this, who is? In one of the comments here, someone suggested that the phone company is messing with me. Does anyone else think they'd do that? Purposely lowering the quality of their own service? What, they want me to switch back to my old carrier?